"We've arranged a global civilization in which the most crucial elements...profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster."

—Carl Sagan, 1996

last updated: August 8, 2004

Big Picture Issues

Compiled by Don Chisholm
http://www.magma.ca/~donchism/

Most of us recognize that slow change is normal and expected. But more and more often the media carries the message that large-scale global change processes are at work – NOW!

There are growing doubts about stability in our future. Compared to when we were children, today’s planetary ecological environment is vastly degraded. If we continue with business as usual, with growth in Human Activity, what will it be like when our children are our age? Should we/could we change our course? It’s A Matter Of Survival suggests the name of a book written by David Suzuki on the issue in 1990.

Ironically, a few core issues that are driving the change are rarely discussed at any significant political level. Instead, we are left to deal with symptoms while ignoring these core causes. We hear about

• Global Warming and all that unusual weather;

• The end of cheap oil, and the energy shortage;

• The scarcity of potable water;

• The explosion in population growth;

• The growing gap between rich and poor;

• Smog clouds covering very large land areas near industrial cities;

• Nowhere to put our society’s growing garbage;

• More wars, suffering, and famine than ever before.

The Big Picture series will focus mostly on (1); the core issues of human population growth, an evolved monetary/economic system that demands exponential growth, and the human propensity to ignore unpleasant truths, and (2) some of the many ideas and strategies that show hope in dealing with the dilemma of today.

There is an almost gravitational pull toward putting out of mind unpleasant facts. And our collective ability to face painful facts is no greater than our personal one. We tune out, we turn away, we avoid. Finally we forget, and forget we have forgotten. A lacuna hides the harsh truth.

—Daniel Goleman Ph.D in Psychology

Ecocosm Dynamics Research

by Willard R. Fey

Ecocosm Dynamics research began early in 1998 to provide a system dynamics (SD) perspective of the world environmental crisis that was widely recognized at that time, but was operationally ignored under the assumption that "technology" will solve whatever is causing it. Our SD perspective, which was presented at the ISSS annual conference that summer in Atlanta, is focused on the Ecocosm, which we define as the whole Earth system with all of its interactions. The word "Ecocosm" comes from the Greek words "oikos" meaning "home" and "cosmos" meaning "universe". There are five major aspects to the perspective:

· The environmental crisis is so serious that the survival of the human species will be threatened within the next century, if it is not resolved soon.

• The environmental crisis was, is, and will continue to be caused by world human consumption (WC) that has been for many years, and still is growing on the average by 4% per year compounded, despite having exceeded the carrying capacity of the earth's renewable resources sometime in the last half of the 20th century.

• Any variable with a 4% compounded-per-year growth rate is unbelievably powerful, in that the variable doubles every 17.5 years, quadruples every 35 years, and increases by a factor of 64 in 105 years.

• This WC growth is caused by the relentless operation of a host of powerful, coordinated, positive feedback loops that are embedded in the world socioeconomic-political system (WSS). They drive world human population (WP) up by about 2% per year and drive average per capita world consumption per year (APC) up by about 2% per year also.

• Since the operational imperative of the current WSS is to create and maintain that 4% growth of WC, humanity's survival depends on the successful resolution in the next 50 years of the terrible dilemma that we call the Ecocosm Paradox.